Reported Burials
1943
Garrison Burials
1944
Markers
1944
Remains Recovered
1946
Unaccounted For
2021
Betio’s largest cemetery shared the same humble roots as any other burial ground. A space of flat ground just south of the airstrip was chosen for the site, and Lieutenant William R. O’Neill – the Catholic chaplain of the 6th Marines – presided over the collection and burial of remains. The “East Division Cemetery” was easily accessible to vehicle traffic, and it appears that men who died all over Betio were brought here for burial in trucks and LVTs.
Unfortunately, little accurate documentation about the cemetery’s initial layout – or the men buried there – is available. Photographs of East Division Cemetery show three rows of graves in a reasonably regular layout. The markers appear to be better constructed than those in other large burial grounds (for example, the stick markers at Central Division Cemetery). Shortly after the battle, a light wooden fence was built around the cemetery.
There was good reason to keep East Division Cemetery tidy. On 1 December 1943, a memorial service in honor of all the Tarawa dead was held beside the runway. Chaplain Lumpkin, the senior chaplain of the 2nd Marine Division, addressed the assembled men: “We must dedicate ourselves to the example of the fallen for the days to come. We, their friends, will remember their parents, wives, children, brothers, and sister, and send out to them a tide of sympathy. Tarawa is now history, and will be written on the heart of every Marine, everywhere.” Combat correspondent Fred Feldkamp noted that Lumpkin’s words were occasionally interrupted by a “Grumman Hellcat streaking down the runway preparatory to taking off.”
Feldkamp counted 146 markers in the cemetery, and took particular note of the grave of Corporal George A. Paluch. “You killed 10 Japs – it will take 100 to avenge your death,” read the inscription. Corporal Paluch was reportedly buried in Grave 33, Row B, of the East Division Cemetery. It is interesting that the correspondent called out this particular grave, for Paluch’s marker was photographed twice – and neither shot shows the cemetery anything like the way it appeared in December 1943. This may indicate that East Division Cemetery was an early – and repeated – recipient of “beautification” from multiple sources.
In early 1944, the 2nd Marine Division Graves Registration Section prepared a list of burial locations for all known Tarawa casualties. They gave a total of 153 markers in East Division Cemetery – in four uneven rows:
Row A: 19 identified, 14 unidentified, total 33
Row B: 41 identified, 3 unidentified, total 44
Row C: 39 identified, 4 unidentified, total 43
Row D: 31 identified, 2 unidentified, total 33
Unfortunately, as shall be seen, this list was of questionable accuracy. Many of the Marines “identified” in East Division Cemetery were later proven to be buried elsewhere. Furthermore, the inclusion of “Row D” – which was actually a separate burial ground some distance away – led to a misunderstanding that was not rectified until many decades after the war.
Conflicts & Discrepancies
Graves Registration provided erroneous information for MacDonald, Matthews, Moore, Kines, Mikel, Patrick, Cook, Gore, Goldtrap, Odom, and Blackmon. Their remains were positively identified from other cemeteries. (There may be others in this category whose records were not available for this study.)
Graves Registration also mistook the burial place of Zehetner as West Division Cemetery. In 2018, Zehetner was identified from remains buried in East Division Cemetery.
Finally, Graves Registration provided conflicting information for Carlson and Shealy. Carlson’s personnel files indicate he was buried at sea from the USS Sheridan. Shealy’s name appears on the monument at Cemetery 13, indicating his original burial was in that vicinity.
The East Division Cemetery was one of the first burial sites to be “beautified” after the battle. As seen above, prior to the memorial service on 1 December 1943, the ground was cleared of debris and nicely flattened. The plot was fenced in. Naval construction troops (Seabees) built an altar and speaking podiums for the service. A selection of commemorative plaques were affixed to the fence rails, dedicated by specific units to their fallen friends. A poetic “Requiem” entreated the dead to “Rest, warriors, rest / Against the day of journeying forth / Tender hands shall lift thee out / To home soil waiting.”
In early 1944, Betio Island Commander Erl C. B. Gould proposed a plan to reconstruct and beautify the many cemeteries on Betio. His purpose was twofold: to create memorials befitting the sacrifice of more than a thousand Marines and sailors, and to ensure that the fast-expanding Hawkins Field could build the infrastructure needed to continue the war against Japan. To that end, Gould had his sailors take down individual grave markers wherever they were cound. Carpenters built hundreds of regulation white crosses, and sign painters inscribed the names of the dead pulled from Marine casualty lists. New markers were installed in “isolated” graves across the island, and in long rows at four designated memorials: Cemetery 11, Cemetery 25, Cemetery 26, and Cemetery 33. These new memorials stood roughly atop original burial grounds, with Cemetery 33 – the largest by far – replacing the East Division Cemetery.
A soldier, sailor, or Marine who attended the December 1943 service would be hard-pressed to recognize the same spot in March 1944. Gone were the fencing and the unit memorials and the three rows of scrap wood crosses. Cemetery 33 looked for all the world like a formal military plot one might find back in the United States. Coconut palm logs delineated separate plots, which were filled with bright white sand carried from the beach. Landscaped walkways led through the rows of markers, with small gardens of tropical flowers carefully tended by green-thumbed ‘Bees. The entire cemetery had shifted 45 degrees – the better to align with the runway – and numbered more than 600 crosses in 14 plots. Commander Gould wanted an individual cross for every man who died on Betio, and more than half of the casualties were commemorated at Cemetery 33 – regardless of where they had actually died or were buried.
With the battle of Tarawa over, life on Betio was relatively safe. However, the island was an active military facility – and an important target. Army and Navy pilots stationed or staging through Hawkins Field assumed regular risks as they flew combat missions against Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands, and Imperial pilots frequently returned the favor with bombing raids of their own. Incautious or unlucky individuals fell victim to accidents in the line of duty, or through some other misadventure. Between December 1943 and October 1945, an additional 25 men were either buried or commemorated with graves in Cemetery 33. (It should be noted that those who died prior to “beautification” also had their original markers discarded – and were subject to the same identification problems that affected those who died in the battle.)
The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company arrived at Betio on 4 March 1946. After spending two weeks organizing living quarters, unloading their equipment, and preparing a site for Lone Palm Cemetery, the men were divided into teams for the exhumation work. The unit commander, 1Lt. Isadore Eisensmith, planned to tackle the largest cemeteries (which the 604th called “Graves”) first and get them out of the way. All remains found and identified would be respectfully reinterred in Lone Palm until arrangements could be made to ship the fallen home.
Eisensmith was pleased by the organized, methodical layout of Grave 33: “rectangular in shape and divided into four plots,” he noted. “From a rough count there should have been approximately 400 bodies interred here…. It was expected to start operations from the left front side of the cemetery and work across it.” The lieutenant must have had some foreknowledge of the “memorial” status, but evidently not enough. “At this point our difficulties began,” he wrote in his operation report. “After two days of excavating no bodies had been recovered. This created much concern.”
Eisensmith’s report is slightly at odds with the 604th daily journal and interment reports, which suggest that a few remains (mostly of garrison troops) were recovered and reburied on 18 March, the first day of operations at Cemetery 33. However, it was nowhere near what the 604th expected to find. Luckily, Father O’Neill – the same man who oversaw East Division Cemetery – was on hand. O’Neill told Eisensmith that “the remains were buried side by side in three rows… supposed to be diagonal to certain tree stumps.” These stumps were long gone, but O’Neill suggested searching for the original trenches rather than digging under the markers. “By a series of prospect excavations and narrow trenches, the middle row was found first,” wrote Eisensmith. “Later the other two rows were found. These rows were also diagonal to the way the cemetery was laid out.” The difficult and backbreaking exhumation work – all of which was done by hand – took until 2 April 1946, and was interrupted by scorching heat, heavy rain, and a fire in the mess hall. Every body found was a potential hazard, as well. “Most of the remains had been buried as they fell without cartridges and hand grenades being removed,” Eisensmith continued. “In fact, the handles did come off some of the grenades as they were removed from the bodies. One actually detonated….” Luckily, no injuries were caused by leftover ordnance.
“There was meant to have been 400 bodies buried in Grave 33,” noted the unit journal, “but there seems to have been a mistake in this. The group of men who have been working there have found only 129, and further excavating has found no more. The earth in the trenches where the bodies were buried in Grave 33 was sifted this afternoon as a further search for personal effects.”
Removing the remains from the ground was just part of the problem: individual identification proved “almost impossible,” as Eisensmith reported. “The original markers placed by Father O’Neill had been removed by whoever had erected the new markers in the cemetery. The existing markers had no relation to the position of the remains.” This discovery, plus the original uncasketed nature of the burials which led to remains being inadvertently mixed up (“commingled”) between individuals, made original burial rosters all but worthless.
Eisensmith’s frustration continued:
Very few of the remains had any means of identification such as Regulation identification tags, shoes, or names stenciled on their web equipment and ponchos.
The identification tags found were almost useless to us, for the chemical reaction of the coral had corroded them until they were illegible. It appeared that the lettering had been etched or lightly stamped into the tags. In addition, most of the tags were almost disintegrated when found by us.
Tooth charts were not of much value to us as was originally estimated. It appeared that additional dental work had been done since the original charts were made with no record kept of it. All these difficulties made our task much harder.
The remains were almost completely decomposed. Skulls, skeletal and long bones, web equipment, shoes, and ordnance equipment were the only things found.
Despite their best efforts, the 604th QMGRC identified only small percentage of the remains they found in Cemetery 33 – including a handful previously reported as missing or disposition unknown. The rest were assigned “X” numbers for later evaluation at the Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu.
While CILH managed to resolve the majority of cases from Cemetery 33 between 1947 and 1951, there are still several open cases dating back to the original burial reports. Eleven men supposedly buried in “East Division Cemetery” have not yet been identified; nor have six men buried or memorialized from the garrison era. Seven sets of remains recovered by the 604th QMGRC in 1946 are still awaiting identification.
• PFC John Arthur Boylan (Row A, Grave 17)
• Cpl. Welver Charles Vaughan (Row A, Grave 19)
• PFC Ambrose Aloysius McDonald (Row B, Grave 21)
• 1Sgt. Orvan Samuel Slaughter (Row B, Grave 23)
• Cpl. Normal Lowell Brueckner (Row C, Grave 12)
• PFC Roger Van Maidment (Row C, Grave 13)
• Pvt. William John Brophy (Row C, Grave 15)
• 2Lt. Donald Roger Dahlgren (Row C, Grave 18)
• Warrant Officer Bernard Elmer Shealy (Row C, Grave 21)
• Pvt. Woodrow Wilson Wetherington (Row C, Grave 30)
• PhM3c Stanley Sage Smith (Row C, Grave 31)
• Sea2 Clarence Edward McDaniel (US Navy)
• 2Lt. Stanley Jack Alenier (USAAF)
• SSgt. John Francis Fedell (USAAF)
• SSgt. Donald Leroy Polzien (USAAF)
• SSgt. James Winston Shell (USAAF)
• Sgt. Harold Rothman (USAAF)
• Betio Unknown X-54 (buried Lone Palm 21 March 1946)
• Betio Unknown X-77 (buried Lone Palm 22 March 1946)
• Betio Unknown X-83 (buried Lone Palm 22 March 1946)
• Betio Unknown X-104B (buried Lone Palm 22 March 1946)
• Betio Unknown X-152 (buried Lone Palm 26 March 1946)
• Betio Unknown X-154 (buried Lone Palm 26 March 1946)
Today, the site of East Division Cemetery / Cemetery 33 is heavily populated and covered with dwellings, yards, gardens, and pigsties – presenting numerous challenges to archaeologists. Non-profit organization History Flight first located the old cemetery in 2009, and recovered human remains believed to date to the battle. Subsequent expeditions met with greater success, most notably in 2014 and 2017. In addition to the poncho-wrapped remains of battle casualties overlooked by the 604th QMGRC, History Flight also found traces of several wooden coffins, indicating garrison era burials.
Additionally, the remains of PFC George Bernard Murray were unearthed by a resident and handed over to the Kiribati National Police in 2019. While the exact place of discovery wasn’t known, Murray was originally reported buried in East Division Cemetery. He was officially accounted for on 16 June 2017.
In 2016, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) ordered the exhumation of Tarawa unknowns buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. These individuals were brought back from Betio in the 1940s, but could not be identified using forensic methods of the time. Reexamination with modern technology – including chest radiography analysis and DNA comparison – has resulted in over two dozen identifications. (A number of these cases were resolved with additional remains recovered by archaeologists.)
